Shenzhen at a glance (April 3) | Mixture of music along ancient silk road enchants SZ

A concert by Wu Man, “The Silk Road Musicians and Huayin Shadow Puppet,” held at the Shenzhen Concert Hall on Friday, was probably the one most pertinent to the theme of the Shenzhen Belt and Road International Music Festival.

A concert by Wu Man, “The Silk Road Musicians and Huayin Shadow Puppet,” held at the Shenzhen Concert Hall on Friday, was probably the one most pertinent to the theme of the Shenzhen Belt and Road International Music Festival, as it presented music from the countries along the ancient Silk Road.

The performance received applause from the audience. “While I was watching the performance, it was like having a variety of delicacies from different cities along the Belt and Road,” said an audience member.

Wu said, “Different musical instruments have different personalities.” If the first half conveyed an image of a pretty lady dancing to gentle, lyrical tunes, the second half was a rock and roll band gleefully shouting and banging their way on primitive instruments.

The Huayin Shadow Puppet Band joined Wu to present classic pieces, including “Ancient Song of Central Shaanxi Plain” and “The Spirit of Han Dynasty.”

The concert ended with the shadow puppet show, “Three Heroes Fighting Against Lyu Bu,” adapted from the “Romance of the Three Kingdoms” by Luo Guanzhong of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). The puppet show was accompanied by Wu’s pipa tunes.

2. Work starts on multi-level parking lot

Construction of a fully automatic, multi-level parking facility funded by the city government kicked off Friday at Tongfuyu Industrial Zone in Shiyan Subdistrict, Bao’an District.

Shenzhen was one of the cities chosen by the National Development and Reform Commission to pilot car park construction in March last year. In 2017, the city gave priority to the construction of multi-level, mechanical parking facilities. The parking facility in the industrial park is said to be the first fully automatic, mechanical and chargeable car parking facility in China.

The steel-structured facility will be built by Shenzhen Jianfa Intelligent Parking Co. Ltd. Drivers can retrieve their cars within 80 seconds.

One advantage of the multi-level parking facilities is that they save land. This facility can offer 180 parking spaces on land that normally accommodates 50 cars.

As the parking facility is Internet-based, drivers can check on their cars, make reservations and pay their parking fees on the app. It will be the first parking facility that is accessible via the city’s intelligent parking icloud platform.

The city unveiled a draft earlier last month offering subsidies to encourage private investment in the construction of multi-level, mechanical parking facilities in a move to save land and solve parking difficulties.

According to the draft, the government won’t charge land users additional fees if they build such multi-level parking facilities that do not increase the approved construction space.

With the increasing number of vehicles, the city is facing worsening parking difficulties, especially in old housing estates.

By the end of 2016, the number of vehicles registered in the city had reached 3.18 million, while the number of parking spaces available stood at 1 million.

The transport commission will expedite the construction of 20 mechanical parking facilities before the end of the year.